Mortal Hearts

By Juli

December 1998

Part 5/9

For disclaimer and warnings, see Part 1.

*******************************

Nick stretched his back and winced. What with trying the featherbed out the night before, the lovers hadn't gotten much rest and the young man had fallen asleep in a chair while waiting for the phones to work. It was still early evening, but already full dark out. God, what a day! It seemed that there were road blocks at every avenue of investigation that they'd tried. He'd attempted repeatedly to get through to London, but so far, no joy.

The ex-SEAL looked out the window. With no moon, it was as black as pitch out there. Orders or not, the young man decided, he was taking the car into town and getting Derek. The Precept had no business hiking back with no light. With their current run of luck, the Dutchman probably would sprain an ankle or something. Nick grabbed his coat, making sure he had his keys, and headed for the door.

Once outside, the young man stopped before even shutting the door to take a deep breath of fresh air. Glasmonadh was remote--and that was damn frustrating right now--but the American couldn't deny that the local environment was pure and invigorating. With a somewhat lighter heart, he reached to pull the door the rest of the way closed.

That's when he heard the first horn.

At least, he thought it was a horn. Startled, Nick automatically grabbed for his gun. Damn, that was close! What the hell was a horn doing way the hell out here, anyway? Nick crouched down close to the cottage for cover and waited to see what would happen, every muscle in his body tense as the young man anticipated danger. The horn sounded again, a sweet tone that pierced the crisp night air like the peal of a bell. The ex-SEAL smiled in delight and stood up. What a beautiful sound--he couldn't believe that it had alarmed him. Another horn joined the first, and then another. Soon the night was alive with their ringing tones.

Nick swayed from side to side as he listened to the unearthly sound.  What a glorious noise! His eyes glazed over, the young man allowed his gun to drop to the ground as he wandered off into the forest in search of the source of the exquisite music. The former SEAL never even noticed when he left the safety of the cottage's lights.

*********************************

I didn't tell him I loved him. I didn't tell him I loved him. I didn't tell him.......

Derek's recriminating chant accompanied his frantic run to the cottage, the Precept berating himself with every step. The overall terror of Nick being taken by the Sidhe was too much to deal with during his panicked flight and so his apprehension consolidated into kicking himself for not telling Nick this morning that he'd loved him.

At least it provided a rhythm that he could run to.

Derek kept up his fast pace throughout his dash to the cottage. If there were any obstacles in his way as he sprinted through the woods, they either took one look at the expression on his face and removed themselves or he flew over them. It didn't matter. All that mattered was getting to Nick before the Sidhe did.

At last the cottage was in sight but Derek's relief was short-lived when he realized that the front door was hanging open. Derek ran inside and had to catch himself against the doorway, else his momentum was such that he would have barreled right through the whole structure. Breathing hard, he frantically searched the small space.  It felt so cozy earlier, but right now it seemed as small as a coffin. Small and depressingly empty.

The Precept slammed the door shut and went back outside to feel the hood of the car. It was cool, indicating that the automobile hadn't been run in some time. Turning in a circle as he searched the area, Derek noticed the now-empty fuel can carefully set to the side of the cottage's steps. Obviously, Nick had made it back from town.

Then where the hell was he!

The Dutchman jerked the cottage door open and went back inside. He picked up the phone and listened. Ironically, the telephones, now that it was apparently too late to warn Nick, were working. Derek frantically dialed and waited impatiently while the connection was made. "Come on, come on, answer damn you!" Alex picked up on the third ring.

"Derek---" she started to say, in delighted surprise.

"Alex, listen to me! Nick is missing," Alex made a startled noise but Derek didn't allow her to get a word in. "Listen, I don't have much time! You've got to find everything you can on the Shining Ones, Alex. No, wait a minute, first call the London House and tell them we need help. You care about Nick too, Alex, *make* them listen! His life depends on it--Oh my God!" Derek's eyes had been drawn to the window while he was speaking and he was startled to see a brilliant glow coming from some distance in the woods. The Precept dropped the phone and ran out into the night, ignoring Alex's frantic pleas for an explanation.

The glow was coming from the site of the fairy ring.

Derek's flight to the cottage had been frantic, but his dash to the fairy ring was even more frenzied. The Precept ran as fast as he could but felt as though he were moving in slow motion. Derek, after all, was only mortal and mortals can't outrun fate. The Dutchman reached the fairy ring, only to find the brilliant light fading into a feeble glow. The Dutchman thought he caught a vague impression of figures on horseback in the light, but it was too pale to tell for sure. As Derek fully entered the ring, even that meager glow faded, twirling down into a funnel before disappearing into a small pinprick of light, for all the world resembling water going a drain. Then even that tiny light disappeared with an audible *pop*, leaving Derek alone in the clearing.

Alone--except for a tiny band of silver left centered on the ground  in the Sidhe circle. Derek took a couple of dazed steps forward and bent to pick the object up. He cradled it in the palm of his hand as he brought the mysterious piece up for inspection.

It was Nick's SEAL ring.

Derek fell to his knees, threw his head back, and howled his despair into the uncaring night.

*********************************

"How is he?"

Despite their best efforts, it was late the next afternoon before Alex and Rachel could get to Glasmonadh. They'd been met at the airport by an unusually concerned William Sloan. Alex in particular was worried about their Precept. Rachel was too, but she wasn't the one that had heard how panicked the Dutchman's voice was when he'd made that call.

"He's........upset." Sloan was rather close-mouthed and wouldn't answer Alex's question more fully. He ushered the ladies into the waiting car, apparently wanting privacy before giving out details on Legacy business.

After Derek's interrupted call, Alex had reached the London House and was herself rather frantic by the time she'd gotten through to Sloan.  She was an ocean and a continent away from her colleagues and they were in grave danger. What had Derek meant when he'd said "Oh my God"? And had he left the phone of his own free will or had someone or *something* taken him away by force?

Say what they would of William Sloan, but even his most vocal opponents had to admit that the man was a thorough professional. Alex had barely gotten her story out before he was marshalling a force of Legacy members to provide assistance.

When Ian Peggs, Kikuko Nohmura, and Cherise Malmgren had arrived from Edinburgh, they'd found the abandoned cottage. Luckily, Derek's sketches of the Sidhe site were on the table, so the trio was able to locate the fairy ring without too much difficulty.

They'd found Derek still in the center of the stone circle, rocking back and forth on his knees, Nick's ring pressed to his lips.

The San Francisco Precept was in shock and the members of the Edinburgh house took advantage of his condition to manhandle him back to the cottage. Derek fought them as best he could--he didn't want to leave the stone circle. In his dazed state, he equated it with leaving Nick and that he wouldn't do. But weakened as the Dutchman was, he couldn't force the issue and soon found himself bundled up in blankets in front of the rented cottage's fireplace.

What good was being warm when Nick was gone?

Sloan filled the women in on the details as the sedan made its way to Glasmonadh.

"So Nick is......gone?" Rachel asked.

"We think so. The Shining Ones don't venture out into the mortal world very often, but when they do leave the Hollow Hills, it's usually to hunt." The insensitive Sloan didn't stop at Rachel's gasp of horror. "From past encounters, we know that time works differently in their dwellings--it may even be that's why they're immortal......"

"But why would they kill Nick?" Alex wasn't going to wait through a lecture on fairy culture to find out what had happened to the man she considered her little brother.

It took Sloan a moment to realize the connection between "hunt" and "kill." "Oh, he's not dead. At least, we don't think he is."

"But you said he was gone!"

"Yes, I did and I meant that literally. The Shining Ones have been known to take a mortal back with them. That's what the hunt is for, to find a suitable human."

Some of Alex's curiosity returned as she realized that Nick was probably still alive. "What is considered 'suitable.'"

"That's something only the Sidhe know."

"Will they give him back?" Rachel asked, hope beginning to come return.

"Yes, we think so."

Both women smiled. "Then all we have to do is wait!" Rachel happily exclaimed.

"That's the problem." Sloan dryly announced as he burst their bubble of happiness. "The last time, the wait lasted 50 years."

**********************************

Three days later, the situation was relatively unchanged. Or, unchanged in the most important respect in that Nick was still missing. Derek was inconsolable and his San Francisco colleagues were at a loss of how to help him. Certainly, they had expected to find Derek distraught. Under the circumstances, who wouldn't be? But when they arrived, the two women were shocked to find the Precept a shattered wreck of a man--a mere shell of the vital leader they knew and loved.

Every man has his breaking point and obviously losing Nick was Derek's. The Dutchman wouldn't eat, couldn't sleep, and barely acknowledged the world around him. Derek hadn't made a single protest when Sloan pulled the rest of the European team out of Glasmonadh.  The head of the Legacy promised to keep researchers on the problem but couldn't afford to waste the personnel to stay on location, he explained, on an essentially closed case.

Alex and Rachel had seethed at Sloan's callousness, but Derek had barely blinked. How could he fault William's cold practicality when he himself was guilty of infinitely worse? Derek listed his mistakes to himself over and over again. *He* had selfishly asked Nick to accompany him to Scotland. *He* had planned the trip to Glasmonadh.  *He* had insisted on investigating the fairy ring. *He* had ignored Nick's misgivings and insisted on splitting the two of them up, leaving the young man vulnerable and alone.

And, on the last day he got to spend with his love, he neglected to tell Nick he loved him.

Rachel had endured her fair share of heartbreak and she finally had had enough. Derek wasn't grieving, which would be a healthy outlet for his emotions. No, he was wallowing, which wasn't good for him and wasn't helping Nick at all either. On the morning of the fourth day of the ex-SEAL's disappearance, the psychiatrist decided to attempt to snap the Precept out of it.

Dr. Corrigan waited until Alex left the cottage to go into town for supplies. Somehow the older woman knew that Alex would be too soft-hearted for this "tough love" session. She wasn't looking forward to it herself, but it had to be done and the sooner the better.

The slender blonde set her jaw and marched over to where Derek was huddled on the bed. The Precept was unwashed, unshaved, and generally just unkept. He spent his time listlessly twirling Nick's SEAL ring around on his finger, a macabre parody of Nick's own nervous habit.  Rachel put her hands on her hips and worked up as much moral indignation as was possible around the pity she felt for friend's misery. Hardening her heart, she began.

"Was it enough?" she asked him without preamble.

Rachel's belligerent tone of voice penetrated the Precept's fog of despondency. "What?" Derek rasped, his voice thick with unshed tears.  The Dutchman had convinced himself that he didn't deserve to cry for Nick.

"Your two months together with Nick--was it enough?"

Derek was stunned. Rachel was usually the most compassionate of women. "What are you talking about?"

The petite blonde continued as though she hadn't heard him. "Because I had 15 *years* with Patrick and it wasn't *nearly* enough. I loved him so much that 15 *hundred* years wouldn't have been enough! Two months--are you that easily satisfied?!"

Derek was on his feet so quickly that he was standing before the thought to move was even complete. "You.....You......." Even at his most furious, Derek was too much of a gentleman to use the "B" world, which was what he really wanted to do. The gall of this little chit!  However, he wasn't so much of a gentleman that he wouldn't yell at a woman when the situation warranted. "What makes you think that I don't love Nick as much as you did Patrick!"

Rachel stood toe-to-toe with Derek, not in the least bit intimidated by their difference in size. Outwardly she continued her contentious pose, but inwardly she was rejoicing. Derek was *feeling* again. Anything was better than the miasma he'd been in since the ex-SEAL was taken. Still, she had one more button to push.

"Because Nick's not dead, damn you! You still have a chance to bring him back, you just have to find out how."

At her words, all of the fight seeped out of Derek and he collapsed to a sitting position on the bed. "What the Shining Ones take into the Hollow Hills doesn't come out again. Not until *they* want it to."  The Precept's voice was dull with reluctant conviction.

Rachel sat beside Derek and put her arm around his shoulders. "Says who?"

"All of the legends concur. Sloan verified it."

Rachel made a tisking sound with her tongue. "And you're going to let a second- rate, paper-pushing researcher like William Sloan have the final word on Nick's fate? That doesn't sound like the Derek Rayne I know."

As much as the words hurt, Derek knew that Rachel was right. In his grief, he'd let his own vague memories of past reading on the Sidhe convince him that William was right. He'd been defeated by his own guilt before even beginning to fight. Nick deserved better.

At realizing just how much more his lover deserved, Derek began to weep. "Oh God, Rachel, what am I going to do?"

Rachel drew the sobbing man's head to her shoulder, comforting him as she would her daughter, Kat. "I'll tell you what you're going to do--you're going to prove William Sloan wrong and get Nick back."

As Derek continued to cry out all of his pent up grief and worry, Rachel let out a sigh of relief. The wound in his heart had been lanced, although it hadn't been pleasant for either of them. Now thePrecept needed to cleanse his soul with these healing tears. Once Derek had picked himself up and brushed himself off, the psychiatrist was sure he'd be back to his normal self and be fully capable of tackling the problem of how to get Nick back.

And then, as Nick would say, they would kick some serious fairy butt.

**********************************

Part 6